


The Kaer Morhen Book Club

by Jack Ironsides (JackIronsides)



Series: The Kaer Morhen Book Club [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is Bad at Apologies, Jaskier the romance novelist, Jaskier | Dandelion Has ADHD, Light Angst, M/M, Winter At Kaer Morhen, canon compliant (so far) if you can believe it, just 10k words of this lot being absolute dorks, not even remotely as horny as that summary suggests I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27483391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackIronsides/pseuds/Jack%20Ironsides
Summary: It’s a tradition the three of them hold. Whenever one of them finds a book of the right kind, he brings it back to Kaer Morhen to share with the others. They keep the books on a shelf in the library that they inexpertly installed themselves.Eskel drags a chair up to form their little semicircle in front of the library fire. Lambert opens the first bottle of krupnikas.‘Well?’ Lambert says. ‘Either of you find a good one this year?’‘Feast your eyes, lads,’ says Eskel with relish, ‘onthis.’He waves an octavo at them.‘Picked it up in Redania,’ he says. ‘Meant to bevery spicy.’He waggles his eyebrows, and Geralt grins.Jaskier is a romance novelist, and Geralt finds out.
Relationships: Background Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: The Kaer Morhen Book Club [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170032
Comments: 202
Kudos: 1446





	The Kaer Morhen Book Club

It’s a tradition the three of them hold. Whenever one of them finds a book of the right kind, he brings it back to Kaer Morhen to share with the others. Most of the time, they’re cheap romances, but one year Geralt’s contribution is a small town’s ancient and inaccurate bestiary, written in the old tongue.

They keep the books on a shelf in the library that they inexpertly installed themselves, so as to keep them both in pride of place, and separated from the rest of the collection, since the rest of the library tries to capture the world as it _is_ between its pages. The books on the rickety shelf ... are usually less accurate than the rest of the library. They’re all sizes, from Geralt’s large leather-bound bestiary, to a little silk-bound pamphlet of dirty cartoons, each page a separate tableau, which Lambert found in Toussaint.

There’s one thing that all of the disparate books have in common, and it’s that they talk about witchers. The three of them like the romances best, as they’re the most fun. The first night of winter that all three of them are home, they’ll meet after dinner with a bottle or two of krupnikas. If one of them has found a book that features a witcher, they’ll read out whatever they’d found, if it deserves reading. Some years there are no books, and they just swap their own tales of the Path.

Most of their finds are courtly romances, of the star-crossed lovers type. Although some of them are chivalric romances, with fighting and monsters. There is sometimes a lover in those, too, but she (usually a she) is scarcely a _person_ with thoughts and feelings; she’s more of a beautiful marble statue to be admired.

Sometimes one of them brings a book which isn’t filled with stories, such as a treatise on politics or history. These usually are advice for a young princeling on how to manage a witcher they might employ, or shockingly inaccurate detailings of past disasters that some poor bastard with a silver sword had had to solve. Sometimes the poor bastard had been one of _them_. Those books usually get sections read out in a variety of silly voices, with enthusiastic barracking from the other two over the more ridiculous errors.

Geralt doesn’t read out the bestiary’s page on witchers, with its description of them as greedy, grasping and venial. He doesn’t hold up the illustration that looks barely human. Bad enough to have heard the description the first time around. Bad enough to hear it decry him for being obsessed with gold when he’d skipped more than one meal in the previous week for lack of coin, to feel those words echo through his still too-empty stomach.

He passes it around to his brothers instead. Eskel gives a little dismissive snort before passing it to Lambert. Lambert reads it silently and then says, ‘Well, that was bullshit,’ and gets up to fetch down the lewd Toussaintois ‘pilgrim’s pamphlet’ from a few years’ previous, demanding that they put on an impromptu play of ‘something a little more realistic than that nonsense’.

It is always a good year when one of them finds a courtly romance. The witcher character is never the maiden’s true love, of course. Sometimes the witcher is a background character, here to save the village of whatever monster is keeping the lovers apart, or which grievously injures one or other of them, so that the other has to watch over their bedside, mopping at their fevered brow. Sometimes, in the most fun books, the witcher is the cad whose attention the maiden must spurn to be united with her love by the end. Occasionally, in one of the more raunchy ones, there’ll be a good scene—sometimes even _two_ —midway through the book of the maiden and the witcher having antagonistically passionate sex, or passionately antagonistic sex, usually with metaphors for the actual act that were even more opaque than those featured in most ballads.

Those kinds of books are the most fun to read out loud. Lambert is usually the most enthusiastic, if rather prone to _heavy emphasis_ on the raunchy parts, which Geralt privately feels is a joke that has outstayed its welcome. Eskel is dramatic and a joy to watch. He’ll gesture wildly with his free hand, book in the other, and put on voices for the characters. If it’s a chivalric romance that he’s found that year, he’ll fetch one of their old training swords from the armoury in order to act out the parts properly. Originally he just used his own sword, but Vesemir had come into the library looking for something one year just as Eskel’s hero slashed his sword at an imaginary witcher, and nicked the very edge of Vesemir’s ear. Fetching a training sword is the least they can do to ensure they never have to see that particular facial expression from Vesemir again.

It’s a shame, Geralt thinks, that the troupes of players who drag their stage-carts from town to town will never know the talent they lack that lies with Eskel. Still, it’s probably for the best, since Eskel hates crowds, and Geralt can’t imagine him enjoying having an entire village staring at him.

Eskel drags a chair up to form their little semicircle in front of the library fire. Lambert opens the first bottle of krupnikas.

‘Well?’ Lambert says. ‘Either of you find a good one this year?’

‘Feast your eyes, lads,’ says Eskel with relish, ‘on _this_.’

He waves an octavo at them. The cover has beautifully marbled paper, and black leather enclosing the spine with gilt decorations pressed in.

‘Picked it up in Redania,’ he says. ‘Meant to be _very spicy_.’

He waggles his eyebrows, and Geralt grins.

‘Any good?’ asks Lambert, leaning back in his seat.

‘No idea,’ says Eskel. ‘I’ve been saving it to share the experience with you boys. Like a good bottle of wine. I haven’t so much as cracked the spine.’

Lambert pours the first glass of spiced honey liqueur and hands it to Eskel, in recognition for Eskel winning this year. Their tradition isn’t a competition. But they all know that courtly romances beat out chivalric romances, and chivalric romances beat out books on politics and history. Currently, Eskel is ahead with an unspoken two-point lead on his brothers. Geralt is fairly sure that Lambert is going to spend more time than he usually does in bookshops and at market stalls—which is to say, more than nearly none—in the next year to try to close the gap.

Geralt wonders if he should ask Jaskier if he knows of any good books with witchers in them. Is that cheating? None of them have ever set down any real _rules_ for this. And surely it’s no different from Eskel asking a bookshop keeper to recommend him something. Anyway, Jaskier has his letters, and books seem like the kind of thing he might know about. Geralt isn’t half as competitive as Lambert, but it would be fun to beat him when he least expects it.

Eskel takes an appreciative sip of his liqueur, and opens the book to the frontispiece.

‘Well?’ says Lambert. ‘Get on with it. We’re all getting older, you most of all, old man.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ says Eskel absently. He clears his throat. ‘I—’ he began, then seems to forget what he is saying. He is still staring at the frontispiece.

‘What, did you buy a blue book by mistake? Is there an engraving of a woman tits out in there?’ snorts Lambert. He goes to snatch it from Eskel’s hand to see for himself, but Eskel moves out of reach.

‘I think,’ he says slowly, ‘that the witcher is actually the hero.’

This is so unlikely, so inexplicable, that Geralt leans forward without really meaning to do so. Eskel tips the open book towards him so he can see, while using his other hand to hold back Lambert, who is apparently ready to move on to the brawling portion of the evening.

The frontispiece shows the witcher in full armour, holding out a hand to a maiden in a red dress. She seems shy, and has her other hand resting on her breast, and her eyes averted. At her feet are scattered flowers. It’s—oddly tender? These books _never_ have the witcher included on the frontispiece. The villain doesn’t get included in the opening illustration. But here—

Here the witcher looks like a hero. Geralt understands why Eskel was so bewildered. He feels like he’s sitting on a cart that just skidded a hand’s width sideways for its wheels to slip into the wheel-grooves dug in the previous year’s winter mud.

‘Just let me _see_ ,’ snarls Lambert.

‘Here,’ says Eskel, turning the book around. ‘Brat.’

‘Huh,’ says Lambert. ‘I wonder what school he’s meant to be from.’

‘Read us some,’ says Geralt, nudging the book back towards Eskel. ‘Before Lambert forgets what little Vesemir managed to teach him about social niceties.’

‘“ _Her Forbidden Love_ , by Frederica Nikiforova, A Gentlelady,”’ Eskel says, voice already slipping into his _reading books aloud_ timbre. ‘Looks like the author’s written another book. _His Wandering Heart_. Maybe I’ll bring that one next year.’

Jaskier would be so good at this, Geralt thinks idly. Him and Eskel would play off each other perfectly. Jaskier would make Eskel the swooning maiden, even though Eskel must be at least three fingerwidths taller.

‘Don’t hog the supply, Esk.’

He wishes he could ask Jaskier here for the winter. He almost has, a few times, but winter is when Jaskier goes to Oxenfurt Academy to lecture. It’s the one part of the year where Jaskier has a stable income, when he can make enough to buy himself a new doublet, or a nice soap to share with Geralt on the road.

‘It’s not— _I’m_ the one who found this one. And I haven’t even started reading it yet! I’m sure you can find your _own_ book. If you _try._ ’

He’s pretty sure that Jaskier would come with him if he asked, and then the next year Jaskier would have old, tattered clothes, and would have to share Geralt’s harsh lye soap. And he probably wouldn’t complain about it, because he usually only complains about mild irritants, and not the things that matter. But he’d sit there by the fire in the evenings trying to get fraying fabric to stay together as it unravels around a tear, and he’d let out the smallest sigh, and Geralt would feel awful about it, and then he’d probably snap at Jaskier and make everything worse. Geralt already takes up enough of Jaskier’s limited supply of days in summer, autumn and spring. He can’t be so selfish as to demand his winters as well.

Lambert snarls.

‘Eskel,’ says Geralt, not wanting the evening to take a turn before any of them have finished a single cup of krupnikas.

Eskel takes a sip, and turns the page. ‘“Chapter One. In a small town outside Lyria dwelt a maiden so comely that it seemed that Melitele herself had bestowed her gifts ...”’

Some time later, Eskel tucks the ribbon between the pages to mark their place, and closes the book.

‘That’s enough for tonight,’ he says. ‘Someone pour me the last of the krup, I’ve fucking earned it.’

None of them say it out loud, but they all know that the game has changed, and their unspoken point system with it. Nothing any of them has found so far tops this book.

*

Geralt keeps an eye out over the next year for a copy of _His Wandering Heart_ , even though he knows his brothers will be looking for it too. He doesn’t mind if Eskel or Lambert find a copy, even if he doesn’t get points for it in their game. He likes the idea of having his own Nikiforova. He doesn’t keep a lot of books of his own, but one of these would be a nice one to have. It’s not often that anyone talks about witchers being heroes. Well, other than Jaskier and his ballads. But hearing _yourself_ be praised for being a hero when you know you aren’t one is uncomfortable. Seeing yourself reflected in the hero of a book is comforting in a way straight praise never is.

He doesn’t find _His Wandering Heart_. None of the booksellers he talks to have a copy.

‘Out of print,’ shrugs the bookseller in Tretogor. ‘Believe me, I’d be happy to sell it to you. I get requests for that damn book every week, it feels like. I even wrote to the publisher in the end, but they said that the author had requested it not be reprinted. She has a new book coming out soon, though, they said. Should be out by Samhain.’

‘Thank you,’ says Geralt.

He turns to go. There’s a woman standing a short way away, a book in her hand. She’s pretending to be engrossed in the cover, but she keeps flicking glances his way. He’s used to drawing attention, but her coyness is new. And although her heart has picked up a little, there’s none of the smell of fear that usually accompanies him every time he’s in close contact with humans.

He’s so discombobulated by the whole situation that he almost walks into the door as he leaves.

He doesn’t quite forget about the new Nikiforova, but the next month is the dragon hunt, and he doesn’t quite manage to get into a bookshop after that. This is also the year he’d planned to ask Jaskier to come with him back to Kaer Morhen. One afternoon’s temper put paid to that permanently. He should have gone after him to apologise. But—Well.

Jaskier’s probably glad to be rid of him.

It’s probably for the best that he’d not managed to track down Nikiforova’s newest book. He doesn’t really deserve the points it would have awarded him.

*

‘Did you find it?’ asks Lambert that winter, almost before Geralt manages to pop the cork on the krupnikas. ‘ _His Wandering Heart_?’

Eskel shakes his head. ‘Nah. Couldn’t find a copy anywhere. How about you two?’

They both shake their heads.

‘Shame,’ says Eskel. ‘I _did_ get this, though. A new book by Frederica Nikiforova. Just came out in autumn.’

‘What’s this one called?’ rumbles Geralt.

‘ _The Cursed Princess_ ,’ says Eskel. ‘Reminds me a bit of that striga of yours. Except the princess isn’t a striga, of course. And she isn’t a child when the curse breaks, either. Rather crucially for our witcher hero.’

‘Hmm,’ says Geralt. He can’t imagine anything like the whole affair with Foltest’s daughter being fodder for a courtly romance.

‘You can’t read them ahead of time!’ says Lambert. ‘Save them for sharing.’

‘Fine, I won’t read the next one before winter,’ says Eskel, rolling his eyes. ‘Can I actually read it now?’

Lambert waves a magnanimous hand. ‘If you like.’

‘You’re too kind,’ says Eskel. ‘Now. “ _The Cursed Princess_. Chapter One. Clytie was the youngest daughter of King Alaric, and she was known as both a great beauty, and one of the sweetest women anyone could ever imagine ...”’

*

Geralt spends the next year without Jaskier, and he mostly doesn’t have the time to think about how he feels about that. That winter sees him bring Ciri to the keep, so their dramatic readings wait until she’s been put to bed.

Geralt hasn’t gone into many bookshops this year, either; it’s amazing how being hunted for sport across the continent by a rampaging army doesn’t make one keen on frivolous shopping trips. At least he knew he would get to read the latest Nikiforova during the winter, and Eskel didn’t disappoint on that front.

The real surprise, however, is Lambert.

‘I found one!’ he grins.

‘I did too,’ says Eskel, waving his book. ‘So I guess neither of us get the points this year.’

‘No, I found a _new one_ ,’ says Lambert. ‘A different author. Which I reckon should get extra points. Apparently “Witcher romances” are the “current _thing_ ”, or so said the bookseller. She was curious as to just how realistic they were about witchers, too. And you know that I’m a man of _science_.’

‘A man with his head up his arse,’ says Eskel, rolling his eyes.

‘Well, _she_ was happy with the outcome of her experiment,’ says Lambert with a faux-casual shrug. ‘Was even interested in ensuring the results were repeatable.’

‘Spare me,’ says Eskel. ‘You want to start, or shall I?’

‘Let Lambert go first,’ says Geralt. ‘He’s the one with the novelty. And if his book winds up being crap, at least we’ve still got the Nikiforova to look forward to.’

‘Maybe mine’s the finest work of literature our little salon’s _ever seen_ ,’ says Lambert. ‘You’ll have to eat your words then.’

‘We’re letting you go first, aren’t we?’ says Eskel, gesturing impatiently. ‘Go on. Dazzle us with your high-class, scientific literature.’

‘I _will_ then,’ says Lambert. ‘Not that you troglodytes deserve it.’

He opens the book. ‘“ _A Witcher’s Secret Passion_ ”,’ he begins. ‘By Leona Braam.’

The new book doesn’t hold Geralt’s attention. It’s clear that this Leona Braam doesn’t know very much about witchers, and hasn’t cared to find out. The culmination of chapter five is the witcher hero going to compete in the ‘witcher trials’, which seem to be something like sheep trials, but with swords and monsters. Eskel laughs so hard he can’t breathe. Lambert pauses in his recitation to glare at the interruption.

‘Remember when books had to be copied out by hand?’ Geralt says to no-one in particular. ‘And they had all those pictures around the edges. Books _meant_ something then. No-one would be making this crap if they had to write it all out by hand.’

‘Shut the fuck up, old man,’ says Lambert, although he’s grinning as he says it. ‘Also your bestiary was scribed, not printed, and look at what crap that was.’

‘That’s true,’ concedes Geralt. ‘Do you want to keep reading? Or wait for Eskel to learn how to breathe again?’

‘Nah,’ says Lambert. ‘This one’s absolute shit anyway. Let’s have the Nikiforova.’

Geralt pours them both a fresh glass of krupnikas and they toast. Eskel finally calms.

‘I’m good, I’m good,’ he wheezes. ‘Give me a second. And also a fresh cup to wet my whistle.’

‘What’s this year’s?’ asks Geralt.

‘ _Starcrossed Love_ ,’ says Eskel. ‘Had to ask at three booksellers before I found one which actually had a copy. It’s _very_ popular, apparently.’

‘And this one’s about witchers, too?’ says Geralt doubtfully. He still finds it unlikely that books with heroic witchers are _popular_.

‘Apparently!’ says Eskel. ‘According to the bookseller. I’ve been good and not read a word of it. I had her wrap it up so I wasn’t tempted. We can break the seal tonight.’

He holds up the book, and it is, in fact, wrapped up in rough cloth, with ribbon securing the package held in place by a blob of sealing wax.

‘Get on with it,’ says Lambert impatiently.

Eskel rolls his eyes, but breaks the wax seal and unwraps the book. His eyebrows raise as he flicks through the front matter.

‘What? What is it?’ asks Geralt. ‘Another interesting frontispiece?’

‘They’ve used a different engraver this time,’ says Eskel evasively. ‘I’ll show it to you later. It spoils the plot, I think.’

He takes a sip of krupnikas and turns to the first page.

‘“Chapter One. Eirian looked out in the cold light of morning ...”’

*

Geralt pours out the last of the bottle of krupnikas into their glasses at Eskel’s gesture. The book has reached an exciting part with the hero Eirian fighting a wyvern while he is already injured.

‘Ha, he reminds me of you,’ says Eskel to Lambert. Geralt expects Lambert to bristle at this, but he’s frowning.

‘I ... think I remember that hunt,’ Lambert says slowly. ‘Happened a few years ago. It’s not _exactly_ like, but—But it’s close. Close enough to be a little uncanny.’

He stops.

‘D’you think he’s _meant_ to be me? Who _is_ this woman? I haven’t told anyone about that hunt. Not hiding it, it’s just—’ Lambert breaks off again, rubbing his neck with one hand. ‘It’s not a particularly good story.’

Eskel and Geralt share a furtive look. Their brother is clearly not telling the truth about the reason he hasn’t been talking about that hunt, but they _also_ know that pushing Lambert on things he doesn’t want to talk about usually _does not_ _work_ , unless what you want out of the conversation is a knock-down fight.

‘It’s probably a coincidence,’ says Eskel, finally. ‘Shall I continue?’

‘Yeah. I—Yeah,’ says Lambert, waving a hand, but he still seems troubled.

Eirian winds up being badly injured while fighting the wyvern, and although he strikes a blow that mortally wounds the beast, it isn’t enough to kill it immediately. It rears up, and looks like it’s about to finish Eirian for good, when another figure appears. A swordsman. He strikes the killing blow, then rushes to Eirian’s side.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks, before Eirian passes out ...

There is the horrible screeching noise of Lambert’s chair skidding on the library’s wooden floor. Geralt and Eskel turn to look at him. Lambert is standing up, looking rattled.

‘Going for a piss,’ he says abruptly, and stalks out the door.

His brothers stare after him.

‘I’m guessing that the story is a bit too close to home after all,’ says Eskel, thoughtfully.

‘We did say that Nikiforova was surprisingly accurate about what our lives are like,’ Geralt says. ‘Maybe she asked enough people and managed to get an anecdote about Lambert. Who’s the swordsman? He seems significant. Or is it a woman in disguise?’

Eskel flicks forward a few pages. ‘No, it’s a man,’ he says. ‘Another witcher, apparently. Eirian is from the “witcher family” of Bleddyn. The “witcher families” seem to be a stand in for the witcher schools. But the new witcher is from another “family”, Glynloyd. The two families are at war.’ He looks at Geralt. ‘Lambert hasn’t made friends with another witcher, has he?’

‘Not just another witcher,’ murmurs Geralt. ‘Might be a Cat.’

‘Fuck.’ Eskel drops into his chair and puts the book aside. ‘No wonder he’s shaken. It’s not exactly how you’d expect your best kept secret to be revealed to your brothers.’

‘Probably a bit alarming to have part of your life dropped into a courtly romance, too,’ Geralt says, his mouth twitching into a smile.

‘Ha! Gods.’ Eskel covers his mouth. ‘Nikiforova probably never dreamed Lambert would actually find out.’

‘Let’s hope she’s writing under a pen name,’ says Geralt. ‘That way she should be safe from him turning up at her house and demanding answers.’

‘Fuck, a _Cat_ , though,’ says Eskel. ‘What was he _thinking_?’

Geralt picks up the discarded book and flicks to the frontispiece. It shows two men in armour facing each other, holding hands. It is chaste, but their closeness and the way their hands are linked it almost looks like a wedding vow.

‘You _knew_ this was about two men,’ he accuses.

Eskel shrugs. ‘It seemed likely based on the engraving. I didn’t actually ask what it was about when I bought it, other than to confirm there was a witcher in it. But you know how weird Lambert gets about things sometimes. I didn’t want the evening to stop before it had begun.’

He eyes Geralt.

‘You’re not going to be weird about it, are you?’ he asks.

‘Hmm.’ Geralt passes the book back to his brother. ‘Could I borrow this once you’re done? I’m assuming we’re probably not going to get much more reading done tonight.’

‘That’s probably wise,’ sighs Eskel. ‘Shame. It was just getting good. Yeah, you can have it once I’m done. I’m in the mood for another drink. Shall I break out the vodka?’

‘Yeah. I’ll get the hnefatafl board,’ says Geralt.

Lambert hasn’t returned by the time they’ve fetched the vodka and the game board. Geralt isn’t particularly surprised at this.

‘So. What about you, Geralt?’ Eskel says, setting up the pieces in the middle of the board. ‘You’ve been very quiet the last couple of years about your pets. The sorceress and the bard?’

‘Nothing to tell,’ says Geralt, putting out the pieces at the sides.

‘Come on,’ says Eskel. ‘We don’t get to have our proper reading this year. Indulge me a little.’

Geralt exhales sharply through his nose. ‘Haven’t seen them since I went on the dragon hunt with Borch. Yennefer left, and then I sent Jaskier packing.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then nothing.’

‘Geralt,’ says Eskel. He rubs his face. ‘It’s been, what, two, three years?’

‘A year and a half.’

‘And you didn’t try to apologise?’

‘Yen doesn’t want to hear it,’ he says tiredly. He’s developing the beginnings of a headache.

‘What about the bard, then? The boy clearly worships the ground you walk on.’

‘He’s happier without me.’

‘Bullshit,’ says Eskel. ‘ _Bullshit_ , Geralt. He’s followed you for _years_ , and we both know that the Path is not easy, or pleasant. And what did he get out of it?’

‘Fame,’ says Geralt bitterly. ‘He got to have a song that’s known the whole length and breadth of the continent. Take your turn.’

‘Don’t be an ass, Geralt,’ says Eskel. He slides his first attacker out. ‘He could do that without following you around for two decades. He could’ve had that after meeting you in Dol Blathanna and never seeing you again.’

Geralt slides a defender out to meet Eskel’s first piece. ‘Perhaps. He doesn’t want to hear from me, though. I was cruel, Eskel.’

Eskel sighs and slides out a game piece. ‘Well, it’s not like he doesn’t know what you’re like. A sharp enough tongue to cut yourself _and_ anyone around you when you’re in a mood. Perhaps give _him_ the chance to decide whether or not he wants to hear your apology?’

Geralt frowns at the board.

Eskel reaches across the table and covers Geralt’s hand with his own. ‘Geralt. I love you. You’re my brother. But you can sometimes be a condescending arsehole.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve just decided that you already know how this guy is going to react, so you’re not going to give him the chance to do it for himself? That’s not right.’

‘That’s not what I meant—’

‘I mean, unless the guy was so awful that you don’t want to see him again.’

‘No,’ says Geralt, staring at the board. He slides out another defender, although his heart isn’t really in the game.

‘There you go, then,’ says Eskel. He makes a little thoughtful noise and slides out another attacker. ‘I know I’d be pissed as fuck if we’d had an argument, and you just decided that there was no way I could ever forgive you, so you were just going to avoid me forever, without me having any way of finding you again.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Isn’t it? How do you go about getting a message to him?’

‘I send it to the university.’

‘And how does he get hold of you?’

‘He doesn’t,’ admits Geralt. ‘I used to meet him in Redania when the thaw arrived.’

‘Sweet Melitele’s fragrant fucking quim, Geralt. Can you see how this might be frustrating?’

Geralt sets his jaw and moves another defender.

‘You have a daughter now,’ Eskel continues relentlessly. ‘Don’t you think you ought to set her an example about not hiding from conflict like a child?’

‘That’s _not fair_ ,’ repeats Geralt.

‘Look. While Ciri is off learning how to control her powers next year, send him word at the university. Tell him to send you a message at a specific inn, and then you can find out if he is interested in hearing what you have to say.’ Eskel slides out an attacker, and takes one of Geralt’s defenders. ‘But frankly, I’d be deeply surprised if he refuses. I will buy you six fucking bottles of that shitty Toussaintois rosé that you like if I’m wrong.’

Geralt grunts. ‘You can’t be that sure.’

‘Have you _listened_ to those songs he writes about you?’ Eskel exclaims. ‘Go apologise. Maybe give him a suckjo—’

‘We’re not like that!’ Geralt says. He starts seriously contemplating just walking out like Lambert did. And then possibly walking out of the keep and spending the winter surviving on the mountain like a hermit, killing rabbits and squirrels with his bare hands. ‘We’re _friends_. He’s never shown the slightest bit of interest—’

‘If someone had written a song that described all of _my_ scars in loving detail,’ says Eskel wryly, ‘I wouldn’t expect to just be calling them my “friend” for long, is all I’m saying.’

‘I will write to him if we can drop this topic of conversation,’ says Geralt, sliding out another piece.

‘Done,’ says Eskel promptly. ‘You should leave me a message at The Swan by Beltane, so that I know whether or not I need to buy you some consolation rosé.’

‘Fine,’ snaps Geralt.

Eskel takes another of his pieces.

‘I think this is going to be a short game,’ Eskel muses.

*

Eskel was right. Jaskier writes back promptly to Geralt’s inn, and says that yes, he would be perfectly happy to see his old friend again, did he want to come by Jaskier’s lodgings one afternoon?

Geralt does not, particularly. He wants to see Jaskier, but he wants to be able to skip over all of the necessary apologising. Whenever they’d fought in the past (whenever Geralt had been enough of a sow that Jaskier threw his hands up and left for awhile), they’d just met up again after a few months and pretended it hadn’t happened.

Geralt knows that isn’t an option this time.

He sighs, and buys a bottle of Redanian scrumpy made from last year’s hard cider. Hopefully this will go some way to softening Jaskier towards him. Jaskier always talks of how he misses it when the road doesn’t take them through Redania. There’s a baker near Jaskier’s lodgings too, and they’re starting to offer discounted buns, since it is mid afternoon. Geralt buys a few of those.

Then there isn’t much more he can do to put off the inevitable, so he knocks on Jaskier’s front door.

There’s the sound of running footsteps, and Jaskier pulls open the door. His face lights up when he sees Geralt.

‘Geralt! Come in! I thought you were one of the printer’s lads—Never mind. Come in to the study. I have a couple of things I have to finish before I’m entirely at your leisure.’

‘Brought these for you,’ says Geralt, handing Jaskier the packages.

Jaskier looks perplexed at the packages in his hands, but smiles at him. ‘That’s sweet. Come through. Ooh, scrumpy? You remembered. Well, as soon as I get this thing sorted, we can crack it open. I’ve been deep in revisions for a week; I _deserve_ it. Honestly, I thought you wouldn’t be coming before tomorrow, otherwise I just would have worked through yesterday and finished this off already.’

‘I can come back tomorrow,’ says Geralt.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not your fault that I have no concept of the passing of time. I really am very nearly done; just spare me ten minutes or so. Besides, this package smells like the honey buns from that bakery nearby. And they won’t be anywhere near as nice tomorrow.’

Jaskier shows him into a small room filled with bookcases and heads to the small desk.

‘You can entertain yourself briefly, can’t you? I just have to finish this last page and then wrap the whole thing up.’

Geralt makes an agreeable noise and has a look around the bookcases. It smells nice in here, like leather, and parchment, and paper. A little like dust. It smells like the library in Kaer Morhen, but homier and warmer.

The books Jaskier keeps are quite different, of course. No bestiaries or alchemical treatises. Instead, the shelves hold things like _The Anatomy of Wit_ and _The Lyrian Tragedy_ and _A Decade of Verse, by J. A. Pankratz_. He does see one volume he recognises, however.

‘Oh!’ he exclaims. ‘You have _His Wandering Heart_.’

‘Ah,’ says Jaskier, looking up from his work.

‘I’ve read the rest of them, you know,’ says Geralt sternly. He’s allowed to like things. He’s allowed to enjoy romances, even if they’re a little silly.

‘I’m sorry, it was just a bit of fun at first,’ says Jaskier, flushing. ‘Once I realised it was so popular I couldn’t put that metaphorical genie back in the amphora. The others aren’t so personal. I really _am_ very sorry.’

‘... What.’ Geralt feels giddy and almost weightless, like the moment between someone pulling a rug out from under his feet and the breathless landing on the floor. ‘You?’ He tries again. ‘ _You_ wrote them?’

‘Try to sound more disbelieving,’ grumbles Jaskier. ‘Wait, you didn’t know?’

‘No,’ says Geralt.

‘So you ... _haven’t_ read _His Wandering Heart_ , then,’ says Jaskier slowly.

‘No,’ repeats Geralt, feeling completely at sea. ‘I couldn’t—We looked for it everywhere, but nobody seems to have a copy for sale.’

‘No, I—I made that a condition when the first print run sold out,’ says Jaskier. He looks almost as lost as Geralt feels.

‘The bookseller said,’ says Geralt. ‘When I went looking for it. What do you mean the others aren’t so personal?’

Jaskier smiles, but there’s no humour in it. He turns to the bookshelves and draws out his copy of _His Wandering Heart_. He presses it into Geralt’s hands.

‘You might as well read it,’ Jaskier says. ‘And then decide if you ever want to see me again.’

He fetches his academic robes from the coat stand in the corner of his study and throws them on over his doublet.

‘Wait—Where are you going?’ says Geralt.

He has known Jaskier for twenty years or so now. In that time he’s barely seemed to age; he wears the years well. (When Geralt is in a less generous mood, he also sometimes says that Jaskier seems to have barely _grown up_ in that time either. But it’s not really true any more.)

Jaskier looks at him and, for the first time since Geralt’s known him, he looks every minute of the years he’s lived. He looks _tired_.

‘I can’t be here while you read it,’ he says finally. ‘I can’t. Not after—I just can’t. I have some things waiting to be collected at my college’s library that I forgot to pick up before you got here, and I have—’ His mouth twists with irony. ‘—I have corrections to a manuscript that need to go to the printer. So I’m going to do those chores, and then I might find a bottle or six of wine. We’ll see. I’ll be home after nightfall. That should give you enough time.’

Jaskier looks away, staring out the door into the corridor. Even Geralt can see that his friend is hurting, and he aches for him. What could possibly be in this book that Jaskier is so afraid of him reading it? What evils lurk between its covers?

‘Jaskier—’ he says, although he has no idea what to say next.

‘If you’re gone when I get back, I’ll understand,’ says Jaskier, still staring out the door. ‘Just—I still have some things of yours. If you want me to send them on to a tavern or something, just leave me a note. The porters owe me a favour, it’d be no trouble.’

‘Sure. I—’ Geralt has no idea how they got to this point. ‘I can do that. But why would—’

‘I’ll see you later,’ says Jaskier, although that isn’t an answer.

Jaskier reaches his hand out as though he’s going to touch Geralt’s face or, more likely, clasp his shoulder, but he seems to think the better of it. He picks up a stack of paper from his desk, which has been neatly tied with string, and disappears out the door.

Geralt is left alone in the study with the book which, had someone asked him an hour ago, he would have said was the one he most wanted to read in all the world.

He has never felt less like reading in his life.

*

Geralt finds the kitchen and fills the kettle. He hangs it on the pot crane and swings it over the fire to boil. He rummages through the place, partly through smell, until he locates the sweet honey-tasting mint leaves that Jaskier keeps in his pack on the road to help with his voice, and a teapot.

He knows he’s putting off the inevitable.

Once he has a cup made, he sits by the fire in the sitting room and opens the book. He wishes he were reading this with his brothers, with Eskel to declaim it into the quiet room. Instead, he finds himself hearing Jaskier’s voice in his head as he reads.

The book feels a little familiar, as he opens it. It isn’t quite as ... comfortable in the telling, somehow, as the other books. Frederica— _Jaskier_ —is clearly still finding his voice.

It opens, not with the girl as _Her Forbidden Love_ did, but with the witcher, Hrothgar. Who has silver hair, and ‘enchanting amber eyes’.

Geralt starts to get a suspicion of why Jaskier was nervous.

He half expects a fictionalised Yen to appear for Hrothgar to woo. But instead, it’s a girl with blue eyes, the daughter of a local lord: Iolanthe.

Hrothgar is hired by Iolanthe’s father to save the village from an ilyocoris. Iolanthe, meanwhile, has had her chastity besmirched, and has been cast out by her father.

It’s a fun, compelling plot, thinks Geralt, but he can’t imagine why Jaskier was so worried. Geralt has never been caught up in a story quite like this. It makes a nice change from the usual thing he finds himself in the middle of, which usually has no happy ending looming regardless of how he tries to spin it. He pours himself another cup of tea and turns the page.

Hrothgar proves that the lord who accused her was lying. Iolanthe’s father apologises for casting her out, but Iolanthe decides that she has had enough of being an earl’s daughter, and wishes to see the world. She decides to dress as a boy and follow Hrothgar.

Geralt’s earlier suspicion resurfaces.

Hrothgar is a gentleman, and since he knows Iolanthe is a lady, he refuses to share her bed, even as they travel together. Instead, he sleeps in front of the fire, on a bedroll, much as Geralt did the first few nights that he and Jaskier shared a room, before they got more comfortable with each other. Iolanthe and Hrothgar are clearly both attracted to each other, but circle each other like a dance. Hrothgar feels that he isn’t good enough for the noble and graceful Iolanthe, and Iolanthe still feels as though Hrothgar couldn’t possibly want her with her damaged reputation.

None of the surface story is anything like Geralt’s life, but the things underneath it ...

Iolanthe cares for Hrothgar in a way (so the narrator tells the reader) that he is not used to. She braids his hair back from his face before fights (Jaskier has never done this, but Geralt can almost feel Jaskier’s fingers in his hair from when he helps wash out blood after a fight). Iolanthe patches Hrothgar up when he returns from hunts. Her delicate fingers, trained in embroidery, now merely stitch his wounds closed. She doesn’t sing, but tells him stories from the books she’s read as they sit together around a fire.

Jaskier is right. He thinks he might recognise the two of them in these pages, even with so many details changed or obfuscated. And it is painfully clear how much Jaskier loves him. Not just from the way that Iolanthe loves Hrothgar, either, but from the kindnesses that the narrative gives Hrothgar. The way he’s described as noble, a hero. How honourable he’s shown to be. Words that barely apply to Geralt.

The book ends with the two of them being surprised on the road by a fleder. Hrothgar isn’t quite as fast as he should be, due the fact that he’d been distracted by Iolanthe’s beauty in the fading sunlight. He protects Iolanthe and defeats the fleder, but is badly injured.

Iolanthe cries over him, trying to stop the bleeding with the clean cloths she keeps stashed in her pack.

‘If you die, I’ll never forgive you,’ she says. ‘I never even had the chance to tell you how much I love you.’

(Geralt remembers a hunt gone wrong with werewolves, remembers staggering back to camp. Remembers the way Jaskier’s face had gone white, the way he’d rushed to Geralt’s side. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he whispered as he fumbled one-handed in Geralt’s pack for his potions, pressing a pad of folded cloth to the hole in Geralt’s side. ‘Don’t you dare die. I will never forgive you. I—I haven’t— _Don’t leave me like this_.’)

Iolanthe stitches the wound closed while Hrothgar fades in and out of wakefulness. She covers it in a poultice and bandages it. In the morning, Hrothgar wakes to find Iolanthe asleep next to him, instead of on her own bedroll across the fire. He lets himself look at her, in a way that he never usually allows himself, and when Iolanthe awakes, he kisses her, and confesses that he’s loved her since they first started travelling together.

The story has them exchange vows and rings in a meadow full of flowers, and continue travelling together as husband and wife. It’s a ... _nice_ end, even if it very much feels like the end of a novel, not like real life. It’s still the kind that some small part of Geralt wishes that he could have for himself. No wonder the book had been popular. No wonder it had begun an entire trend for witcher romances.

But for all that it’s clearly a _story_ , for all that most of it is _made up_ , Geralt feels like he’s trespassed on some intimate moment of Jaskier’s without permission. As though he’d hidden in the closet to watch his friend consummate his wedding with a new love. Even though Jaskier had handed him the book, had told him to read it.

What does one do when handed something like this, which might as well be a confession?

Geralt doesn’t know what to feel. His heart is pounding, its usual slow beat nearly at a human speed. He can’t think clearly. He never, in a thousand years, would have guessed that this would be the outcome of apologising to Jaskier. What does he do about it?

He still isn’t sure when he hears Jaskier’s front door open and a moment later, Jaskier calls out.

‘Hello? Geralt?’

‘In the kitchen,’ he calls back. He unwraps the sweet rolls hurriedly and fetches a cup for Jaskier before sitting back down.

Jaskier appears in the doorway but doesn’t come in.

‘You’re still here then,’ he says warily. ‘That’s good.’

‘I am,’ Geralt confirms, fiddling with the cloth that the rolls lie on.

‘And you ... definitely read it,’ Jaskier says.

‘I did.’

‘Well?’ demands Jaskier, finally coming into the kitchen. He rests his hands on the table opposite Geralt. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense like this. What did you think?’ A wry smile crosses his face. ‘Three words or less.’

‘It’s good,’ says Geralt. ‘Your later books are better, though. The writing in this one feels self-conscious in places.’

‘I wasn’t really looking for literary criticism, Geralt,’ says Jaskier, his voice tight with tension.

‘Sorry,’ says Geralt, looking at his hands. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’

‘I’m hoping the fact that you’re still here means that what you say is something along the lines of, “Everything’s fine, Jaskier. It’s a bit weird that you put me in your book, but we can pretend that it never happened and move on as we did before”,’ he says.

Geralt looks up at him. ‘It isn’t just me, though, is it?’

‘Well ...’ Jaskier says. He trails off and doesn’t continue. He sits down and picks up a sweet roll.

‘I remember the werewolf hunt,’ Geralt says abruptly. ‘I remember what you said when you were looking after me. Parts of it were the same in the book.’

‘Yes,’ Jaskier says. He makes a tear at one side of the roll and continues tearing along the side, rotating the roll in his hands.

‘You were going to say something, but you stopped yourself,’ says Geralt. ‘Is what Iolanthe says what you were going to say? “I haven’t got to tell you that I love you”?’

‘What is the purpose of this—’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes,’ Jaskier says looking up at him. There is something hollow in his eyes.

Geralt exhales.

‘I wasn’t going to tell you,’ Jaskier continues, biting out each word, ‘because I know you don’t feel the same way. You made that pretty clear on the mountain. That _hurt_ , Geralt.’

‘I came here to apologise for that,’ Geralt says helplessly. ‘I know I was cruel. I didn’t mean it, any of it. Not really. I just—’

‘I don’t mean what you said that last day,’ Jaskier says. There are tears welling in his eyes, and one spills over. He wipes it away. ‘Fuck. I promised myself I wasn’t going to be a mess. I was going to pretend it didn’t hurt like I usually do. I didn’t mean what you _said_. Which, yeah, that hurt too. That was _awful_ to hear, and it was unfair. Which I think you know. I meant the night before, when I tried to finally lay my heart out for you, and you seemed to listen for all of a minute, then got up and went into Yennefer’s tent. And then left me behind the next morning.’

‘Oh,’ says Geralt.

‘It took some of the sting out of what you said later,’ Jaskier says. He laughs, and another tear falls. ‘You’d already shown me exactly how needed I wasn’t. Not even coming second to Yen, which I could cope with. I’d had years to reconcile myself to that. But I was not even an afterthought. You didn’t think of me at all.’

Jaskier puts the shredded roll down and puts his head in his hands.

‘Part of me just wishes you’d hated me for the book,’ Jaskier says without looking up, his voice muffled. ‘It might’ve hurt less.’

Geralt drags a chair next to Jaskier’s and reaches out to hold him. It’s the least he can do, to return one of the thousand touches Jaskier has given him over the years. Jaskier buries his face in Geralt’s chest, the fabric of Geralt’s shirt held in one clenched fist.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmurs to Jaskier’s head.

‘Don’t,’ Jaskier says, his fist tightening. ‘Please. Don’t tell me how you wish you could love me. Just. Just don’t, for awhile.’

‘Of course I love you,’ Geralt frowns.

Jaskier gives another broken laugh. ‘Yes, you love me like a friend. Like your brother. Please, Geralt. That doesn’t hurt any less. Just let me be.’

They sit in silence for a while. Geralt listens to the thump of Jaskier’s heart and tries to work out what he can say that won’t hurt Jaskier further.

Jaskier eventually gets up and leaves the room. He comes back after a minute or two, looking a little more put together. He sits back in his chair.

‘All right,’ Jaskier says. ‘I’m ready. I’m wearing my grown-up breeches and everything. Tell me.’

‘When I’m near Yen, it’s hard to think of anything else,’ Geralt says slowly.

Jaskier’s face hardens, but Geralt presses on.

‘I thought—I thought we were in love. Yen doesn’t agree. She thinks it’s just the wish. And I—I’m starting to wonder if she’s right.’

Jaskier sits silently, watching him.

‘I haven’t had a lot of love affairs,’ Geralt says. ‘It’s hard when you’re always travelling. You don’t find many people wanting to love you. You don’t even find many people willing to be your _friend_. You’ve ... always been an exception to that.’

He exhales. He wishes he was better at this.

‘My brother Eskel said that you cared for me. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think you’d shown any sign of being interested.’ He gives a short, humourless laugh.

‘Geralt ...’ Jaskier whispers.

‘I don’t know what to do with someone thinking I’m worth something. It seemed so easy with Yen, after the djinn was gone. And now all I can think is that it was easy because we’d been bound together with _magic_. I should have suspected that it wasn’t real. Yen could be forgiven; she must have men falling at her feet everywhere she goes. I can’t have been special. But _I_ should have been suspicious.’

He sighs.

‘Sorry, I’m doing a terrible job at this. I just don’t understand _why_ , Jaskier. Why you’d want to be with me. Why you followed me for years. I’m bad tempered. Stubborn. Eskel pointed out that I’m a condescending prick. And he’s my _brother_. I don’t understand how that could be enough. How _I_ could be enough. I’m not heroic, not like Hrothgar is.’

Jaskier’s mouth drops open. ‘You’re not—He is _you_! He is _literally you,_ you _ass_ ,’ Jaskier said. ‘ _Everything_ that Hrothgar does in that book are things I have _seen_ you do. “I’m not a hero,”’ he mimicked. ‘ _Geralt_. What is _wrong_ with you.’

‘Hmm,’ says Geralt, nonplussed. ‘Hrothgar uncovers the lies about Iolanthe. When that lordling tried to destroy her for turning him down. I haven’t done anything like that.’

‘You saved that young girl,’ Jaskier returns. ‘In that small village near the Rivian border. When the alderman had tried to claim that she had stolen from his house so that he could demand that her father sell her to him to be a “maid”. So that he could control her. So he could _hurt_ her.’

‘Oh,’ says Geralt. He remembers that town. ‘That’s different, though.’

‘Is it? _Is_ it different? Or does it just not count in that thick head of yours because _you_ were the one doing it?’

‘Hmm,’ says Geralt. He doesn’t really have an answer for that.

Jaskier stands over him and drops his hands onto Geralt’s shoulders. He gives him a gentle shake. ‘Geralt,’ he says. ‘You are a good person.’

Geralt lets the corner of his mouth creep up as he looks up at Jaskier. ‘All right,’ he smiles.

‘ _And_ a stubborn, condescending prick with a bad temper,’ Jaskier says. ‘You can be both. We all, as the poets say, take on many roles during the play that is our lives. We each of us have a dozen masks to wear. And I think I have seen almost every one of yours, and none of them frighten me.’

Geralt rubs his face against Jaskier’s forearm and gets a wicked thought. He grabs Jaskier’s hips and tugs him forward so that he loses his balance and winds up in Geralt’s lap.

‘Oh,’ says Jaskier faintly. ‘Okay. This ... isn’t where I thought this conversation was going.’

Geralt makes a pleased little noise. He hooks his thumbs under Jaskier’s doublet and strokes them along Jaskier’s sides. He wants to get his hands under Jaskier’s shirt, but that means taking his hands off Jaskier first. And he’s not quite ready to do that yet.

‘Can I kiss you?’ he asks.

‘Can you—?’ Jaskier repeats, still sounding dazed. ‘ _Yes_. Yes, plea—’

Geralt captures his mouth, and delights in all the little noises he draws out from Jaskier. He has overheard some of them before; it’s hard not to when his hearing is so acute, and Jaskier so free with his affections. But _these_ noises are for him, and that makes all of the difference.

He draws back reluctantly, and kisses Jaskier on the end of his nose. Jaskier looks at him like he’s never seen him before.

‘What?’ Geralt smiles.

‘Nothing,’ Jaskier says, shaking his head. ‘Just—thinking how lucky I am.’

Geralt hums. ‘You should come to Kaer Morhen with me next winter. Meet my brothers. And meet Ciri—Princess Cirilla, my Child Surprise. They’ll love you,’ he adds, when Jaskier looks uncertain. ‘You’re something of a celebrity there already.’

Jaskier preens. ‘For my songs?’ he teases. ‘Or the fact that I put up with you for twenty years?’

‘Oh, partly the latter,’ Geralt laughs. ‘But no, your books, actually.’

Jaskier groans in anguish. ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘We get together every year and read them,’ Geralt says, enjoying himself. ‘Eskel loves them. He might actually ask you to sign one.’

‘ _Noooo_ ,’ Jaskier moans.

‘Ciri steals them to read when she thinks I’m not looking. She’ll probably be just as thrilled to meet you.’

Jaskier looks aghast. ‘She’s a _child_ , Geralt! She shouldn’t be reading those!’

‘She’s nearly fourteen,’ says Geralt mildly. ‘I’m sure you were reading things you shouldn’t at that age.’

‘That’s completely different,’ mutters Jaskier.

‘Even Lambert likes your books. He even managed to say something nice. Well. He said they “weren’t total shit”, but that’s high praise from him.’

‘They’re just something stupid I write during winter to keep myself from losing my mind with boredom while teaching,’ Jaskier says. ‘If these are the things I get remembered for after I die, I am going to resurrect myself through sheer willpower just so that I can die again from the embarrassment.’

Geralt chuckles. ‘Well, _I_ like them. I told you that.’

‘You did,’ says Jaskier. ‘And I’m still worried about all those blows to the head you take in your fights. My cousin got hit badly over the head when he was training as a squire, and it made him all funny.’

Geralt laughs and pushes Jaskier off his lap. He reaches for one of the honey buns. ‘Why did you start writing them in the first place then? If they’re so stupid.’

‘A few years ago I was here in plenty of time before the winter semester,’ Jaskier says, sitting back in his own chair and nibbling at one of the shreds of his deconstructed bun. ‘There were a bunch of us in the SCR—the Senior Common Room, that is—avoiding our prep work for the semester, and we wound up talking about the books we’d write if we didn’t have to do lesson planning. I can’t remember what the others said they’d write. But I had the plot for _His Wandering Heart_ drop into my head, nearly fully formed. I went home that evening, and I had one of my little fixations. It’s like being in a trance. It’s easier with songs; they don’t take all that long to write. Books, not so much. But a few days later I looked up, and I had written a book.’

Jaskier goes to the cabinet in the corner of the kitchen. He fetches out a bottle of wine and brings it back to the table and pours them both a cup. It’s a rosé, Geralt notices, pleased.

‘Of course, having written an entire book, I wanted to show someone. I took it to the SCR and showed it to one of the other professors who’d been part of the conversation. Foolishly, I happened to choose Marija, who is a rhetoric professor. Never listen to rhetoric professors, Geralt. They’re far too good at convincing you of things. Marija told me that I really ought to get published, and that she happened to know some printers who were just _desperate_ for books, and I should come along with her this afternoon. And more or less like that, I was published.’

Jaskier takes a sip of wine.

‘I was delighted at first. It’s one thing to have one’s poems collected, or one’s songs printed up with a little woodcut illustration, and quite another to have an actual _book_ to one’s name. Even if one’s name does not actually appear anywhere. Gunter gave me the very first copy printed to keep. And every time I saw him he’d tell me just how well it was selling. And then he told me it had sold out—and in only a week or two!—and that he wanted to reprint. I was terrified.’

Jaskier laughs at himself.

‘Suddenly the book seemed like a real, tangible thing in a different way. It seemed to me that once it was reprinted, the more likely it was that you would see it. Even as I thought it, I knew I was being ridiculous. In retrospect, apparently l was less ridiculous than I thought. On the other hand, I realised that if another book like _His Wandering Heart_ was popular, it might help ... humanise witchers, for lack of a better word. Reach different people from those who heard my songs. I told Gunter that I didn’t want it reprinted, which startled him, and that he could either reprint and I would never give him another book, _or_ I’d write him two more books and he could reprint those as much as he liked. And happily for my past self, he chose the latter. That’s the whole story, really.’

‘Hmm,’ Geralt says. ‘Is this from the vineyard we went to that time?’

‘The one that keeps all the goats?’ asks Jaskier. ‘Of course.’

‘If you come to Kaer Morhen, my brother might want to have words with you about one of your books,’ Geralt says, remembering. ‘ _Starcrossed Love_ , I think it was.’

‘You’re brothers with Aiden?’ Jaskier exclaims. ‘Wait. No, you can’t be. Aiden’s partner, then.’

‘Lambert,’ says Geralt. ‘Unless you borrowed from lots of witchers for that one.’

‘No, it’s almost entirely what Aiden told me,’ says Jaskier. ‘We met in a pub after ... after the dragon hunt. Both of us were keen on drinking ourselves into a stupor, I think. We wound up exchanging stories. Aiden had had some horrible fight with his partner and didn’t think the two of them would ever reconcile. I wrote them a happier ending.’

Geralt thinks back to the end of the book: Eirian and Conleth vowing to face whatever horrors the world brought them together.

‘It was a good ending,’ he says.

‘I had permission,’ says Jaskier defensively. ‘To turn it into a book, I mean. I’d told Aiden about the books I write, and he liked the idea. I sent him a copy.’

Geralt pours Jaskier another cup of wine and pushes the last bun towards him. Jaskier smiles at him.

‘Did they work it out?’ Jaskier asks. ‘I haven’t heard from Aiden for a while. I was hoping that they’d reconciled after all.’

‘I don’t know,’ Geralt admits. ‘We didn’t know Lambert had anyone like that. He didn’t tell us. He didn’t tell us about Aiden at all, not even after we were reading that book of yours, and Eskel and I worked some of it out.’

‘I hadn’t even _thought_ of that,’ Jaskier says, dismayed. ‘I don’t like the idea of giving away people’s secrets like that.’

‘We just thought they were friends,’ Geralt says, and waits for Jaskier to stop choking on his bun. ‘In our defence, we’d assumed that you’d made the book up and happened to use this one fight that you’d heard of that Lambert had been part of. It wasn’t as though Lambert was being particularly forthcoming.’

Jaskier is laughing too hard to speak.

‘Honestly, Lambert being friends with a Cat was shocking enough. It was probably better that we’d underestimated them. It let us work up to the idea.’

Jaskier stops laughing. ‘Aiden said something about that.’

‘There’s a lot of ... history,’ Geralt says carefully. ‘There’s a lot of very good reasons for the School of the Wolf to be wary of the Cats.’

‘You’ve never told me so much about being a witcher in one sitting,’ Jaskier says. ‘I don’t think you’ve talked about it this much in all the time we travelled together.’

‘It’s habit,’ says Geralt, shamefaced. ‘It’s not that I didn’t trust you, it’s just that—’

‘You got used to holding back things that you thought might be used to hurt you,’ Jaskier finishes. ‘I got something of a sense of it while I was talking with Aiden.’

‘You’ve shown that you’re careful, though,’ Geralt says. ‘I like it.’

‘Oh? When?’

‘In your books. You wrote about “witcher families” instead of “witcher schools”.’

‘You always avoided talking about them,’ says Jaskier. ‘That seemed important.’

‘And you know about the potions I use, but you don’t mention them in any of your books. Iolanthe looks after Hrothgar’s wound with a poultice.’

‘You don’t like talking about the things that make you different,’ Jaskier says, shifting in his seat. ‘And it seemed like the sort of thing that would make some people uncomfortable, or could be used to hurt you. A poultice made just as much sense. More so, to someone who doesn’t know much about witchers.’

Geralt hums.

‘Will you come travelling this year?’ he asks. ‘Roach misses you.’

‘Melitele, _yes_. I’ve missed it. We’re actually between terms at the moment, and although I’ve got half a plan sorted, Pavel will be happy to—Wait.’ Jaskier narrows his eyes. ‘The last time you said that, it turned out that you’d got a new Roach, and she didn’t trust me _at all_. New Roach was very bitey and took a _very_ long time to warm up to me.’

Geralt couldn’t help his grin.

‘Is this _actually_ your way of telling me that you have a new Roach? _Geralt_. You have a terrible sense of humour.’

‘You like me, though,’ Geralt says, enjoying the novelty of the thought.

‘May the gods help me, but I do,’ agrees Jaskier.

‘You should show me around your lodgings,’ says Geralt, looking around. ‘All I’ve really seen is the study and the kitchen.’

‘There’s not much more to it,’ says Jaskier. ‘Just a small sitting room.’

‘Where do you sleep, then?’ says Geralt, widening his eyes. ‘On the floor of your study?’

‘No, in the _bedroom_ ,’ says Jaskier. ‘Don’t be ridic—Oh. _Oh._ I thought you said you weren’t good at this.’

Geralt gives a kind of one-shoulder shrug. ‘I was just interested in seeing where you were staying.’

‘Yes, all right,’ says Jaskier, licking his lips. ‘Why don’t I show you around then. Starting with upstairs.’

‘Sounds good,’ says Geralt.

He follows Jaskier up the narrow staircase.

‘This is it,’ says Jaskier a little breathlessly, pausing in the room’s doorway. ‘What are you giving me that look for?’

Geralt gives him a predatory grin. ‘Oh, just thinking,’ he says, ‘of all the points I’m going to get this winter when I turn up home with my very own Nikiforova.’

He walks Jaskier into the bedroom, unbuttoning his doublet as he goes, and kicks the door closed behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Geralt's bestiary, if you were wondering, is from ‘The Edge of the World’ in _The Last Wish_.
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr ([jackironsides](https://jackironsides.tumblr.com), or [jackironsidesfic](https://jackironsidesfic.tumblr.com)) where I’m trying to juggle approximately 47 Geraskier WIPs.


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